Speaker 1:

Hi, and welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, where we get perspectives from industry thought leaders about strategies that are unifying marketing and sales cycles to help accelerate growth inside your world.

Richard Lane:

Welcome to The Insiders by durhamlane, an industry podcast that connects the worlds of marketing and sales, one guest at a time. I’m your host, Richard Lane, I’m co-founder and chief commercial officer of durhamlane. We’re a revenue acceleration agency helping enterprise customers to create always on channels of meaningful and well qualified sales opportunities. Today I’m absolutely thrilled to be joined by Paul Stevens. Paul is the director of Digital Health at OMRON Healthcare Europe, a world-leading medical device company that provides high quality healthcare devices and solutions for use at and in the home. Paul, great to have you on the show, and thank you so much for being with us.

Paul Stevens:

It’s a pleasure. Great to be here.

Richard Lane:

So, Paul, just to get things started and to help our listeners get a take for you, would you mind just giving a quick introduction to you and perhaps a rapid skirt around your professional background to date?

Paul Stevens:

Sure, absolutely. So in my current role, as you said, I lead the digital health team at OMRON Healthcare Europe. Actually, my background and professional training is as a chemical engineer. I come from a little bit different direction perhaps than many people that are in marketing, sales, business development. But I started my career after studies at Procter & Gamble, and I spent a couple of years really working in process development organizations, so linked to what I’d studied, but I had the unique opportunity within Procter & Gamble to be really close to the commercial and consumer insights teams.

And I found that actually that was what was exciting me about the work, understanding what users needed, how they reacted to our products, and how we could improve those to drive the business. So, a couple of years into my career, I made that switch and really started to focus on product management, consumer insight. And that led me, after about eight or nine years or so, to OMRON. I was really interested in that being in an environment where we’re much closer to end users and where the products and services that we’re developing have a meaningful impact on people’s lives from day one, really. I mean, knowing your blood pressure, using nebulizers to treat conditions like asthma or even common coughs and colds, we are really in the hands of users that need our products and services. For me, that was a really interesting and exciting change and I’ve been with OMRON now around 12 years in a variety of roles, but always with a focus on developing product services and understanding what our users really need.

Richard Lane:

Fantastic. There’s got to be a pun in there somewhere around chemical reactions and how users react to products and services. I think. So maybe you’ve got sharpened antenna pull for what really makes your customers tick and how you can create the right products and services for them.

Paul Stevens:

When I made that transition from, well, firstly from studying chemical engineering to the real world, it was quite surprising how different the real world is. When you’re studying, you study perfect systems, perfect fluids, and then you go into a world of laundry detergent where everything reacts differently to how it does in your studies. And I think it’s a little bit similar with people and user insight as well. We try and make these simplified perfect world models, and then when we go into the real world to scale those up and work with them, of course everybody actually reacts differently to your modeling. You have to adjust and learn along the way.

Richard Lane:

Yes.

Paul Stevens:

So there’s some science behind it, but there’s also a lot of testing, learning, and experience too.

Richard Lane:

And they react differently, but don’t necessarily tell you that they’re reacting differently. So more complicated than ever. Absolutely. Well, that’s some great background. Thank you. I know that’ll be really useful for the context of today’s episode. One of the topics that we thought we would look at together was leading effectively through disruption. So again, with your background, I can see the relevance there and now more than ever, and I speak from personal experience of being in the world of business, it is a tough time to be in business, I think no matter what business you are in. And for healthcare organizations, it must be super tough. So, be good to get your view on the world. Obviously sharing what you can share from an OMRON perspective, but tell us what you are seeing out there.

Paul Stevens:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it is challenging times from a business point of view, but also times that are full of a huge amount of opportunity. In healthcare systems, there’s a recognition that the current way of doing things is not going to be sustainable for the future. Particularly in the UK with the NHS, the availability of healthcare and the ability for, essentially the mindset that a lot of people have that it’s the doctor’s responsibility to make them well and to keep them well rather than personal responsibility. That’s something which I don’t think can survive into the future. And that means changing the way that healthcare is delivered, supporting people with self-care, which is something of course that OMRON has been pioneering for the last 50 years in terms of home blood pressure management and supporting people with self-management.

But it needs to go a few steps further than that, and we are seeing that transition start to happen in the NHS with virtual wards and the ability for people to be kept at home for longer, but also looking at long-term condition management and how people can be enabled and empowered to support their own health and keep themselves healthy. I think one of the challenges that brings to us as an organization is that our customers are asking for more. Well, OMRON as a company started out in the days when blood pressure was something that was done by doctors. It wasn’t imaginable for many of them that it would be something that people would measure at home for themselves. And it took, I would say, 30 or 40 years, still in some places in the world, home measurements are not accepted, but in general, they’re now well accepted by doctors and they use them to make decisions. But that journey is now accelerating, and clinicians and healthcare systems are asking us, well, that’s just the data, how do we get patients to do something with that themselves?

And we’re seeing innovative companies coming to the market that are offering that kind of self-care support. But more importantly, we’re seeing that rise of remote monitoring as well. In the virtual ward scenario, you have people that are, for a very short time, monitored in an acute or critical state, but now the ask is, well, how do we keep those people healthy for two, three, four, five years into the future? And what role does remote monitoring play in that?

Richard Lane:

I was just thinking, it must be interesting from an OMRON perspective, you are an organization with tenure, so you’ve been around a long time. You’re in a wildly disrupting innovating market. I guess two things, how do you keep at the front of that innovation? And secondly, you probably know more than lots of organizations coming into the market, so how do you make that count as well?

Paul Stevens:

Yeah, it’s a great question. And it’s I think a common challenge for many traditional older organizations, when you see innovative companies coming into the market and doing things differently. It can be easy to also reject out of hand what they’re doing and focus on your current business models.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Stevens:

But what we try to do at OMRON is to say, okay, well what is the end ultimate goal that we’re trying to achieve? And that’s keeping people healthy. We have a focus on our zero events strategy, which is essentially a mission to reduce the number of heart attacks and strokes from cardiovascular disease. And so, measuring your blood pressure is a part of that, but it’s not the only part of it. And if we focus on that as an end goal, then the way that we achieve that goal is open for discussion. Of course, there’s challenges in that thinking. Our revenue, our profit, all comes from that current traditional business, and new business models are not necessarily profitable in the early days. So we have to balance the investment into new businesses and new opportunities while still keeping an eye on the current business and making sure that our new investments are really supporting the base business as well.

Richard Lane:

I hadn’t really thought about it this way, but it’s not dissimilar to how IT companies had to shift to cloud provision. So, they had an organization that forever had serviced customer with servers on site and going and supporting those, and then suddenly there was this big transition away and organizations like Microsoft managed it really, really well after some time, other organizations were more challenged. So I think you’re right, it’s getting the balance, isn’t it, between the traditional, what gives us the revenue and the EBITDA of today, but then diverting effort and expenditure on the ways of tomorrow.

Paul Stevens:

Yeah, absolutely. And we always need to ask ourselves, why are we the ones that are doing this? So, it would never be the case that OMRON would become a pure software company, because somebody else can do that, and they will probably always be able to do that a little bit better or faster than OMRON could. But we have a huge amount of knowledge and brand equity and quality reputation within the market, we can leverage then to build the right solutions on top of our product portfolio and make the whole thing stronger, but not to try and, let’s say, abandon our heritage and our history and pivot totally. So we are looking at how that balance should be and how far we should move into the services arena versus devices, but they have to be complimentary to each other.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that all comes down to, I guess that element of leading through change, is how do we make sure that the day-to-day continues whilst we are developing our service and product lines in other ways. And durhamlane as an organization is no different, on a much smaller scale than OMRON, I would hasten to add. One thing you mentioned, Paul, was about new entrants into the marketplace. So I’m just interested to know how you defend your position when new organizations are coming in with perhaps more agility due to their size and youthfulness, perhaps with different ways of looking at the world that aren’t necessarily correct as well, I guess sometimes.

Paul Stevens:

Yeah. I think there’s a few different things that we try to do. Firstly, we look at, as I say, what’s the real problem that we’re trying to solve? So, we need to make sure that we are focused on that core direction and that we play to our strengths. So yes, we may not be the most agile, but we do have a strong organization behind in terms of quality, regulatory, data security, and that trust of the OMRON brand. Which means that, particularly in a healthcare environment, customers can trust us to be delivering on those quality elements and to meet our commitments. Whereas we do see in the startup world that companies come and they go, and you don’t necessarily have that consistency over time.

So I think that’s one key element. The second element is to make sure that we are open to what’s happening in the market. We understand what we are good at and what we are not, and we look to partner in the areas that we do have those potential weaknesses or gaps in our offering. So we are not looking to deliver everything ourselves. We’re looking to create that environment where innovative startups and companies can add value together with OMRON rather than us trying to out-compete the market in every field.

Richard Lane:

So creating your own ecosystems in your marketplace? Yeah, great. And any change program, big, small, or somewhere in the middle, means we’ve got to bring people along on that journey with us. How do you and how does OMRON support its people to be successful and to understand that vision whilst ensuring that the revenues come in to keep the lights on today?

Paul Stevens:

Yeah. It’s a great question, and I think, a challenge for all large organizations. How do you transform skills and capabilities to meet those new opportunities and have that right level of focus from indeed the base business revenue generation, but then taking enough of that time, effort, and resources into new initiatives that could become large in the future? I think as OMRON, we have done that well over the past couple of years. I mean, it’s safe to say that we were and still are, to some extent, a traditional large organization. So we have complex processes, we have a lot of steps in order to get products to market. And that doesn’t necessarily fit with the philosophy of software development, agile changes.

Richard Lane:

Yeah.

Paul Stevens:

And as you said, the mindset and the capabilities of the people that are needed to be successful in that environment can be quite different. What we’ve done is that we’ve tried to create a safe space in a bit of a separated organization with the digital health team, where we can recruit people that have knowledge and experience of those operations and protect them a little bit from the day-to-day business so that they can focus on doing what they know is right for the new business areas. It is also important that we still have really strong links into our base business and for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we have huge amounts of knowledge and expertise within the organization that can really help the new business.

Richard Lane:

Yes.

Paul Stevens:

We don’t want to look exactly like a startup. We are OMRON for a reason, and we want to use those expertise to help us and support that new business growth. But secondly, we need to make sure that our digital business objectives are tied really well into the objectives of the wider business for the long term as well. I think it’s not the intention to create a completely separate business unit with a separate revenue stream, it’s about how can the two businesses really interact and support each other to grow.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, that’s really interesting. We do a lot of work with big global enterprises that have startup business within their ventures unit or within their organizational structure. And typically, I think a bit like yourselves, we find they keep the global brand name as part of their name probably for that brand recognition, awareness, and security. I do know of one example where they haven’t taken the brand name because the context and the way people feel about it wouldn’t actually help them in the sales process that they have for the business they’re building. But in general, I think it certainly makes life easier to build confidence when you’ve got that legacy brand, which is a trusted name.

Paul Stevens:

And I think the brand is a part of it, but those skills and capabilities that you have sitting behind that are really critical too.

Richard Lane:

Yeah.

Paul Stevens:

So, when we have questions around data security, we have teams of experienced people that have been working on system algorithms and services for many years, albeit in the traditional device business, but they have that depth of knowledge. And that’s something which is as a large company, we have those… Sorry, I’ll start again with that bit. So, as a large company, we have capabilities that startups would not be able to access or it would be very expensive for them to access.

Richard Lane:

Yes.

Paul Stevens:

But I can just pick up the phone, get a hold of those people and help them to answer questions or challenges that we have as a team. So it really does create a competitive advantage to be part of that organization. On the downside, perhaps we have some processes that have been designed with physical product manufacture in mind that we need to do differently, and it does take time to change those processes, to change the mindset of the wider organization to enable this kind of iterative agile process. So there’s pros and cons, but as long as we leverage the strengths of the organization, then it’s definitely beneficial in terms of stability, quality, reliability that we can offer to our customers.

Richard Lane:

And it also means that at a leadership level, you’ve got everyone facing the same direction and trying to achieve the same goal, as you spoke about earlier, because you can always reach out to someone, but if they’re not willing to help you, then it’s not been helpful. But if you have that at OMRON, then that’s a really positive story for the organization as a whole, I would argue. Paul, one thing we talk about a lot on The Insiders is mastering the complex sell, but actually just listening to how you’ve been talking about some of the disruptors into your marketplace, their agility and sometimes their perhaps even lack of experience into your market. I wonder whether we could have a little conversation around mastering the defensive sell. So, what are some of the things that you could share with listeners that you are doing to approach the market to give that confidence? We talked a little bit about the ecosystem of partners that you are creating. Be nice to dip into that a little bit more, if you’re able to share some of that with us?

Paul Stevens:

Yeah, absolutely. I think when we started, particularly on the journey for remote patient monitoring, where we were then entering into a healthcare market, needing to interact with clinicians directly as users rather than recommenders of our products, which has been their role traditionally in the past. And also that complex web of stakeholders, payers being different to users, regulatory, and other stakeholders having the opportunity to say no as well. Actually, that’s where our brand quality and our reputation created that first line of defense or offense, in some extent, to the competitors, because that’s something that we could fall back on. And I didn’t experience actually in three years a question or a challenge from a customer that our team couldn’t answer or couldn’t provide the data for, and I think that’s what helped to build our reputation.

Of course, we’re a work in progress, the same as everybody else, but we know our fundamentals. In conversations with customers, that’s why they prefer to choose OMRON for services over other players. Also, because they know that we are in it for the long run. We’re not pivoting after six months because there’s been a little bit of money announced by the government in a different functional area, which we see a lot in the market of companies that need to chase returns because they have large investor portfolios, they’ve got to grow their revenues quickly. We have a 2030 plan, we have stability in our teams and in our market objectives, and our customers really appreciate that.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, excellent. Okay. Well, I think there’s lots of factors there that help you to defend against some of maybe the new players, but also allows you to aggressively go after new business as well and offer new services, but with the context of security, and you’re leveraging your brand, and credibility as well. So a great place to be, but also one that takes a lot of time and effort and determination to get right, I know. Okay, we’ve added a new area into this series of The Insiders, Paul. It’s the actionable insight moment. So, I guess the question is, what one thing can you share with the audience that they can take away and action immediately based on some of the situations you find yourself in? What might that be?

Paul Stevens:

For me, I think a broad insight that I’ve gained over the past years is this concept of knowing what you do well and finding others to do the things that you don’t do well. Or to help you to grow capabilities that may become core to you in the future. So, obviously one example of that, and the reason that we are talking today, is that we worked with durhamlane on sales lead generation because that’s an area where we didn’t have experience in direct sales and lead generation in the type of market that we were entering with remote monitoring. But we also see the same in technology partnerships, and actually in building internal teams as well. So it’s really important for me as a manager that we’re recruiting people into the team that do things well that I don’t know how to do or that the team doesn’t know how to do. And we have to be comfortable with that, that we are not experts in everything and our teams and our industrial partners should be bringing that expertise so that we can grow faster.

Richard Lane:

Yes, absolutely. I mean, it’s something I’m really interested in at the moment, Paul, because I think probably we’ve always tried to do too much, and guess what? A couple of years ago, we really simplified who we are, what we do down, and it led to rapid growth. And now that partner ecosystem feels as important, if not more important, than ever. So we’re in the process of finding those best fit partners to help us expand our capability to our customers, but remaining true to who we are and what we do and being the best at that as well. So I totally get that, great bit of advice. We’ve had a question in from one of our listeners, Alexandra. Alexandra asked us, what are the differences in terms of skills sets and expertise required for employees in a business that transitions from manufacturing to software? So caveat being, you’re not going on a total transition, but you’re going on a part transition from manufacturing to software. So what are the differences in terms of skill sets and expertise required?

Paul Stevens:

I think the key one for us was transitioning into a software development mindset. So, when we design a medical device, particularly if it’s one that’s offering really new or unique functionality, it can take about 10 years from initial design to getting into market and starting to grow. And there’s multiple steps along the way. A lot of upfront user validation, both first in insights and then in product and design, then designing the manufacturing systems, then the production, making sure that quality is stable, and then finally releasing to market. So that is a really extended process, where you have to make sure that your business cases are really solid before you start investing the millions needed in your production lines. You have to make sure that your usability and user insights are correct, because once the product is being manufactured, it is very difficult to make changes.

Of course, in the software world, the opposite is almost true, in that you want to be able to get things quickly to market, test and learn, and release fast. That has been challenging for us as an organization because our processes were not designed to do that. We have stage gate processes that require certain information, business plans, KPIs, before you can move along. And to try and operate in a different way within processes that are not just internal, they’re also your quality management systems that have been signed off by regulators and everything else, it is very different. So what I’m really proud of with OMRON as a company and organization is how quickly it recognized those challenges and we started to change across the board.

So, being a Japanese organization, a lot of the support functions are based out in Japan, and we had really quick engagement from those teams in terms of how can we support you and what do we need to do differently? Although it’s a mindset more than a specific capability, but that change is essential to being successful and of course, something which digital native startups will design their processes to begin with in that way, that’s something that we’ve had to adapt along the way.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, I often talk about refueling in midair. That’s that classic thing, isn’t it? Where you are not only refueling, you’re building a new fueling station in midair and using a different type of fuel.

Paul Stevens:

Yeah, it’s quite a change. And of course on the sales end, the sales structure is very different too because we’re talking about licensed sales versus device sales. So the capability and the knowledge that your on the ground team need is very different from retail, key accounts, management, and trade marketing, those activities that we have in the traditional business. To account managers that really understand the healthcare system, the stakeholders, again, that relationship of payers, users, and other influencers that all need to have a yes before you can move forwards. So that’s been quite a journey for us too, but we like to leverage the capabilities of the people we have within the organization. So giving people the opportunity to learn in this new environment, but bring the skills and knowledge that they have from their existing experience into the new world has been really exciting as well.

Richard Lane:

Yeah, excellent. The last question from me, Paul, is sometimes the hardest one to answer actually. This is the request for a song to be added to The Insiders Spotify playlist, which is, I must admit, an eclectic mix of songs from various genres and decades. Have you got a song for us to add on your behalf?

Paul Stevens:

Yeah, so I’m going to go a little bit left field. So it’s an Eminem song.

Richard Lane:

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Paul Stevens:

So it’s Stan from Eminem.

Richard Lane:

Excellent.

Paul Stevens:

Well, actually I’ve always felt that I wanted to be a bit of a performer, but I’ve been held back by my natural talents in that I have no singing ability, and I tried to play multiple different instruments and never really managed to master any. So, the stage life wasn’t really for me. But joining a Japanese company, of course karaoke is a part of the culture.

Richard Lane:

Yes.

Paul Stevens:

And it’s something that we do like to do also as a European team when we’re having events. So an Eminem song, like Stan, is perfect. I find somebody in the team who can sing and they do the Dido bits, and I just go ahead on the Eminem bits. It’s always fun.

Richard Lane:

Excellent. Oh, that’s brilliant. We will absolutely get that added that. Is that the one where there’s a Christmas version as well?

Paul Stevens:

I haven’t heard that, but I might need to go and look for it.

Richard Lane:

Anyway, there is definitely a Santa version, I think it’s that one. But we’ll get that added, great track, and I love the story. And I hadn’t really put together the fact you’re a Japanese company and karaoke before, and I should have done, but that’s brilliant. We’ll get that added.

Paul Stevens:

And definitely, I’m going to be looking for that Santa version because we’ve got our Christmas party coming up, so it could be a different string in my boat.

Richard Lane:

I’m hoping I’m right now. We’ll have to cut this entire bit from the episode if I’m wrong, but we’ll find out. Look, Paul, it’s been really great having you as a guest on The Insiders. Thank you. I really enjoyed listening and learning from you around the difficult times we’re in, but how an organization such as the size and scale of OMRON has found a way to become agile, has found a way to shift. And you’ve shared some really, really interesting points on the journey as we’ve talked that through today. So, thank you very much. Thanks for being with us.

Paul Stevens:

It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Richard Lane:

Okay. Well, to our listeners, thanks for tuning into The Insiders. Please subscribe on your preferred podcasting site to ensure you’re notified of all new episodes as and when they’re published. And if you’d like to learn more about durhamlane, our outsource services, and our unique method of selling at high level, please visit durhamlane.com for more information, and we’ll see you soon.

Speaker 1:

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